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In the 1920s, Will Rogers found one point in favor of the government's finances: "It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for," he told audiences whose wealthiest members paid only a few cents on the dollar. In the modern day, of course, Americans of all walks of life pay a lot more and get a lot more government than they pay for.

In the past 20 years, Americans received $45.9 trillion worth of federal government (measured by spending, not by value) and they paid $38.5 trillion in taxes to get it.

As Will Rogers moaned in the 1930s, "Lord, the money we do spend on government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money 20 years ago."

The next 20 years will be much worse, as the country tries to provide for the aging of the baby-boom generation without making anyone pay taxes that will cover all the cost.

The country cheerfully accepts a rapidly growing national debt. Americans are more likely to revolt against taxes than against spending.

Slow Pay

Judging from the traffic jam around a regional post office that was open after 5 p.m. on April 15, a substantial number of Americans put off doing their taxes -- or at least mailing in a payment -- until the last possible moment. Such people are dragging their feet against the current tax system, rebelling in the only legitimate way available. We should bless their restraint.

America won't be in really big trouble until Americans in great numbers decide to vote against the system the way Italians and Greeks do -- with massive, deliberate, obstinate refusal to pay.

Estimates of the underground economy in those countries range upward from 30% of reported, legal GDP, compared with about 10% estimated for the U.S.

A tax revolt by individuals seems little more likely than a Russian revolution started by an angry refugee in Switzerland seemed in 1917. But the taxpayers have a vanguard: Some Wall Streeters avoid a taxable presence in New York or New Jersey; some Californians have fled to the deserts of Nevada and Arizona rather than pay the Golden State's leaden tax rates.

Joseph Vranich has been building a business in California by advising businesses how to move. It could be California's last growth industry. He reports the leading destinations are Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Florida -- all of which boast low or no state income taxes, lower business taxes, and lower business regulation.

Some analysts scoff at the idea that tax-avoiding people or businesses really move from California to another state, even to avoid the new income-tax rate as high as 13.3% and the new sales-tax rates as high as 10%. Indeed, Vranich can count only a few hundred businesses a year leaving California and reopening in another state. Official figures indicate that far more go out of business than go out of state. Why that should be a comfort to any California politician is another matter.

Money Walks

Most large businesses won't pick up all their toys and abandon an inhospitable jurisdiction. But they do rearrange their affairs to put more of their profits out of reach of the most grasping tax authorities.

Jack Ciesielski, proprietor of The Analyst's Accounting Observer, has combed through documents filed by the Standard & Poor's 500 companies to estimate the money they park overseas to avoid U.S. taxation.

Most of the companies don't make adequate disclosures of their tax-playing; Ciesielski takes what they do disclose in 10-K annual reports and uses them to make estimates. He pegs the 500 companies' untaxed foreign earnings over the five years from 2008 through 2012 at $934.8 billion. They've accumulated $1.8 trillion since 1959.

Could this be important for investors to understand? By Ciesielski's estimate, untaxed foreign earnings were about a quarter of all earnings for the 500 companies in 2012. Untaxed earnings are more valuable than earnings subject to tax. A dollar of untaxed foreign earnings is worth a dollar as long as the company can claim it's never coming home; it's worth as little as 65 cents if it's brought here and tax is paid at the top rate.

Technology and health care lead the S&P sectors with almost half the hoard, because patents and other intangible assets can be moved around the world.

Ciesielski says, "The essence of the game is to park as much of your company's expenses as possible in the high-tax countries of the world to minimize the income earned in those countries and to maximize your revenues and profits in the low-tax countries." He also says companies have become addicted to their untaxed foreign earnings.

"It gives them a means to deliver on earnings estimates, and makes them popular with investors," he says "Underneath, however, things aren't exactly as they seem, but they can't stop using the drug because it would slow reported earnings growth." Ciesielski suggests re-examining the legal basis for not taxing offshore profits.

Dangerous Incentive

It's good advice for investors to look skeptically at offshore profits, but it could lead to the wrong tax policy. Full disclosure would be an invitation to full taxation.

Another way to look at the problem is to see untaxed foreign earnings as a promising harbinger of a corporate tax revolt. Just as contemporary Americans admire the Boston Tea Partiers of 1773 and their revolt against the British tea-taxers, they should cheer for the corporate-tax rebels.

Any tax revolt should have as a goal the complete elimination of the corporate income tax, which raises prices for consumers, hurts shareholders, rewards borrowers, drives jobs offshore, and requires the unproductive employment of a legion of accountants, lawyers, and financiers.

Too many Americans imagine that a corporate tax is an alternative to a tax paid by citizens. In fact it is paid by citizens, indirectly and invisibly. If we ever intend to pay for all the government we have, we must stop pretending that somebody else will do the paying.